What I Found In The YA Department

A couple of months ago I found a book called The Girl With All the Powers by M.R. Carey in my local library's YA department. It's a post-zombie apocalypse story, which in my humble opinion is the only kind of apocalyptic story worth reading. It's a particularly good one. Girl With All the Powers is a stay up late into the night book.

Saturday morning, after waking up at 4:45 from a nightmare about fire, I finished reading The Boy on the Bridge, also by M.R. Carey. This is a prequel to Girl With All the Powers, and, though it repeats a lot of the Girl plot, it was a damn good read. Love Stephen. Love Foss. But, then, who doesn't love a woman with a gun?

But Why The YA Department?

It wasn't a YA book, though. Nor was The Girl With All the Powers. What were they doing in the YA department? Do the librarians here know something that I don't? That we have a big teen zombie reading population in this town?

Both books have an important young character in a pseudo mother/child relationship, but its hard to call them main characters. Well, maybe in The Girl With All the Powers. Not so much with The Boy on the Bridge. These books switch points of view frequently, and they're often about adult experience, at least, adult experience with zombies.

So, let's see...my point... Oh, yes. These books have a very important child character, but they aren't actually adult books with a child main character like, say, the Flavia de Luce books. I really don't see something here that will draw YA readers, specifically.

Well, except for the zombies, of course. But, then, who doesn't love a zombie?

Teens Reading Adult Books

I'm not saying YA's shouldn't read these books. They're terrific. And we live in a country where we can all follow our reading tastes, so teenagers are free to dip in the adult reading pool. Kids are supposed to like to read up, right? At some point, they're going to be reading adult books. In fact, I once read that part of a YA librarian's job is to lead teen readers to adult reading. In which case, seeding the new books section with adult books makes sense.

The only concern then would be adults missing out on these particular books because they're in the YA room.